Grace & Power
The Private World of the Kennedy White House
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Unlike so many other books, Grace and Power rejects gossip and conspiracy theory to tell the story of John and Jackie’s three years in the White House soberly, comprehensively and sensitively, from beginning to sudden end.
Sally Bedell Smith’s book on John and Jackie Kennedy was hailed by authoritative reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic as the most distinguished and well-written book on a perennially fascinating subject for years. In the US the hardback was high on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks.
It is an immensely poignant chronicle of pivotal historical events seen from the inside out, from within the private home of the President and First Lady. Amidst the superficial opulence of their social circle, we see the Cuban Missile Crisis and the burgeoning American civil rights movement from the perspective of an invalid president often barely well enough to appear in public. Together with his young wife, abandoned by her husband’s relentless womanising, nevertheless changed the politics and style of America. Grace and Power is the classic account of that time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith, a Vanity Fair contributing editor (and biographer of Princess Diana and Pamela Harriman, among others), does a workmanlike job of narrating familiar scenes from the Kennedy White House, aka Camelot. Although publicity for this volume is at pains to emphasize that Smith has interviewed "scores of Kennedy intimates, including many who have never spoken before," the few new witnesses unearthed by Smith attended the same parties, concerts and picnics as all the other sources we've heard from in previous years. So once again Smith waltzes through portraits of the Kennedys entertaining, with greatly varying degrees of success, the likes of Gore Vidal, Ben Bradlee, William Walton and JFK's frequent "squeeze" Mary Meyer. Not a few of the people who loom large in Smith's volume (Bradlee, Theodore White, Paul "Red" Fay, Vidal, Lee Radziwill, Walton, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Dave Powers and Ken O'Donnell among them) have previously as Smith's profuse footnotes attest written their own accounts of the Camelot scenes in which they play. Endeavoring to interweave her somewhat redundant yet eloquently rendered social history with the political history of the Kennedy administration, Smith tends on occasion to oversimplify and understate major strategic discussions and initiatives, these being sketched much better in such books as Richard Reeves's President Kennedy. For those who seek yet another highly readable account of the White House milieu shaped by John and Jackie Kennedy the place we've all gotten to know so well through the years Smith's book does the job. 48 pages of photos not seen by PW.
